Burundi battles with food shortages
Wednesday, 19 January 2005
Burundi battles with food shortages
The United Nations steps up the distribution of food to some 520,000 people in north-eastern Burundi, where famine has reportedly led to the deaths of more than 100 people since November.
Across the entire district of Busoni in Kirundo Province there are no crops - and there have not been any since April last year. There have been no rains since then, which has resulted in three harvests failing. Disease has also destroyed the drought-resistant cassava plants.
Those who stayed in the province are coping by crossing into Rwanda where they get work in the fields. They call it "gupagasa", meaning doing hard work for little money. They are paid on average 50 US cents a day.
The government says that close to one million people need aid, nationwide. The UN's food agency, the World Food Programme, was already distributing food to the most vulnerable, but more food aid has been arriving since the reports of widespread famine began to emerge two weeks ago.
Kirundo provincial governor Philippe Njoni says that over 250,000 people need urgent food assistance for at least the next four months.
But not all the people in need have received rations.
The people are aware that they cannot rely on food assistance and are calling on the government to help them find drought-resistant crops.
The government has introduced a special tax in order to cope with the situation. But it may not be enough - one government minister said they needed more than $50m to cope with the situation.
